Loaded farm vehicles are hard on rural roads and bridges

August 31, 2007

ROCHESTER, Minn. (AP) - Come harvest season, farmers will haul heavy crop loads in grain wagons. Come spring, loaded manure applicators will head to those fields. A law passed 14 years ago exempts those vehicles from size, weight and load provisions on all roads except interstates. Farms have grown since 1993, and so have the farm vehicles, said Polk County Engineer Rich Sanders. Sanders said he and other county engineers are worried about the damage these vehicles are doing to county roads and bridges. ''The problem with them is is you have all the weight on a few axles. On a grain cart you might only have two axles or you might only have one axle, and it probably weighs one hundred thousand pounds,'' Sanders said. ''When it comes to crossing a bridge, it becomes a problem because bridges weren't designed on a single axle.'' The loaded weight of some of this farm equipment is 100,000 pounds. It's more than the average tractor-trailer, which can legally weigh about 80,000 pounds. County roads and bridges are actually designed for less weight, but the real trouble is the design of the vehicles. Instead of carrying 80,000 pounds over five axles, like a tractor-trailer does, a manure spreader loads it over no more than three axles and sometimes just one. All that weight connecting with concrete at a single point creates a tremendous amount of pressure. Minnesota County Engineers Association President Don Theisen said several years ago, a wheel of a grain cart punctured the deck of a timber bridge. And he said because these vehicles are exempt from weight restrictions, the farmers driving them are also exempt from liability. ''Is one pass with one of these pieces of equipment going to cause a bridge to fail? We're not saying that,'' Theisen said. ''But they are definitely consuming more life of But no one has any statistics. And come harvest time there will be more trucks hauling more corn for ethanol over rural Minnesota's roads and bridges.